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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. The United States Constitution that emerged from the convention established a federal government with more specific powers, including those related to conducting relations with foreign governments. Under the reformed federal system, many of the responsibilities for foreign affairs fell under the authority of an executive branch, although important powers, such as treaty ratification, remained the responsibility of the legislative branch. After the necessary number of state ratifications, the Constitution came into effect in 1789 and has served as the basis of the United States Government ever since.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government faced many challenges in conducting foreign policy, largely due to its inability to pass or enforce laws that individual states found counter to their interests. The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American War of Independence, stipulated that debts owed by Americans to British subjects were to be honored, and also stipulated that former British loyalists could bring forth suits in U.S. courts to recover confiscated property. These provisions were unpopular and many states blocked their enforcement. This led to British refusal to vacate military forts in U.S. territory. Additionally, after the war, British traders flooded U.S. markets with British goods, to the detriment of American importers and manufacturers. The Confederation Congress lacked the authority to regulate this trade, and intrastate trade was further hampered by states' own attempts to impose import duties on goods from elsewhere in the United States. Lastly, the Spanish Government, which controlled New Orleans, barred American ships from navigating the Mississippi River. Southern delegates to the Confederation Congress wanted to lift this ban, while coastal merchants, especially in the northeast, were willing to make concessions in exchange for a treaty with otherwise favorable commercial terms. The large majorities necessary for ratification of such measures under the Articles of Confederation often resulted in the deadlock along sectional lines between North and South.

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

In attempting to resolve such issues, as well as problems arising from the payment of debts from the Revolutionary War and other domestic issues, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention created a model of government that relied upon a series of checks and balances by dividing federal authority between the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive branches of government. The framers of the Constitution had originally imagined a weak presidency and a strong legislature divided into a House of Representatives and the Senate. Under the Articles of Confederation, considerable minor paperwork had bogged down important business enough that legislators decided to establish an executive branch to deal with routine paperwork. When writing the Constitution, the framers expected the Senate to handle important issues, particularly the ratification of treaties, while the Executive would attend to matters of lesser consequence. However, as deliberations continued, the Executive branch acquired more power to deal with some of the issues that had been a source of sectional tension under the Articles of Confederation-and so the President acquired the authority to conduct foreign relations. The two-thirds clause for ratification of treaties in the Senate, as opposed to a simple majority, allowed the South a greater voice in these matters and assuaged concerns about the attempts to abandon navigation of the Mississippi.

The Constitution does not stipulate existence of departments within the executive branch, but the need for such departments was recognized immediately. Congress passed legislation creating the Department of Foreign Affairs in its first session in 1789, and in the same year changed the name to the Department of State after it added several additional domestic duties to the Department.

After the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the machinery of state had been designed, but not yet tested and put to use. The provisions for management of foreign affairs would be put to the test in 1794, when the Senate had the opportunity to accept or reject the controversial treaty with Great Britain negotiated by John Jay.

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Milestones: 1784-1800 - Office of the Historian

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NOTE TO READERS "Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice. The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.

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The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

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Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

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Paul Revere's Ride: The Revolutionary War in Four Minutes

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The Boston Tea Party was a protest that the colonists organized to protest the British Government's decision to tax tea.

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Hamilton: An American Musical tells the story of one of our Founding Fathers: Alexander Hamilton.